Key questions from the second quarter earnings call conducted by Evergreen Solar, Inc. on July 17, 2008.
Timothy Arcuri (Citigroup): Last call you were talking about your 2009 pricing view being down mid to high single digit. It seems like there has been a fade in the pricing outlook next year. What do you think about for pricing next year?
Richard M. Feldt: We are still believing pricing declines will be in the 8% to 10% range. We have just signed a lot of contracts with a lot of customers and that is what we believe we will be selling for.
Timothy Arcuri (Citigroup): If I am your customer what does it take for me to break that contract?
Richard M. Feldt: As I described before these are take or pay contracts, we assume that pricing will decline consistent the German Feed In Tariff which is going to start going down the 8% to 10% range. It varies contract to contract but in round terms if it is close to double the decline then we have to go back in good faith and renegotiate. A few percent more than what I have described, no change but if it is double what I have described then in good faith we would go back and renegotiate.
Timothy Arcuri (Citigroup): If I have a contract with you and if it assumes a down 8% year, next year it would have to be in fact down 16% or more for me to come back to you and get a new price?
Richard M. Feldt: In round terms it is not a bad way of thinking, it is not that simple, but yes it has to be substantially different than what we have assumed in the contract and in terms of thinking about it, thinking about a close to doubling is not a bad way of thinking about it. I can not go into detail of every contract and they are different but conceptually the notion was, and it is symmetrical too so if pricing did not drop, then we would be able to go back and renegotiate a higher price than the expected decline. But the point is that for a few percent, 3%, 4%, 5% changes we do not want to be renegotiating either way, up or down. We want to understand our business, they can understand their business. They can do projects around those prices but if the market tanks then from a practical standpoint we would have to renegotiate because someone could not stay in business if they bought something from us at one price and had to sell it at a much lower price. That is about how I can describe it, I hope that helps you but I can not go into much more detail.
Timothy Arcuri (Citigroup): It is like that every year going forward so even into the out years, right?
Richard M. Feldt: Yes.
Jesse W. Pichel (Piper Jaffray): What was your Spain exposure in second quarter and overall first half and how do you expect that to change in the second half and what do you think compensates for that?
Richard M. Feldt: We do not have big Spain exposure. Remember relative to the market at large our volumes are relatively small. I know there is a lot of angst about what is going on in Spain. We feel relatively unaffected. I can not say completely unaffected because if the total market changes dramatically and if total demand changed real dramatically it might affect us but in general we are not worried about Spain.
Timothy Arcuri (Citigroup): Sun Power indicated that they are seeing a lot of quoting activity from the US utilities. Are you seeing similar quoting activities or only the system installers are seeing that?
Richard M. Feldt: It is the system installers. The good news for us is that Massachusetts just recently passed a progressive innovative new energy bill allowing utilities to own up to 50 megawatts of solar power generating assets which is a big deal. We are hoping that that provides both incentive and ability to move forward in working more closely with utilities. But just the specific answer to your question, the utilities talk to the installers, they have not historically talked to the manufacturers. We are trying to engage them.
Christopher Blansett (JP Morgan): When you think about your customer interaction in some of the contracts are you seeing significant regional differences in interest due to the subsidy decline?
Richard M. Feldt: We are seeing a lot of interest. We only built a couple of panels and we have already virtually sold all this factory, Phase I and Phase II and we have had inquiries from more customers. In fact our sales force, although small, is asking can we speed up capacity expansions because we still have a lot of people in line, it is a relative thing. We have a number of fairly substantial firms asking if there is ways we can free up some capacity for them. Each company has their own view, our view is still bullish. We are getting a lot of inquiries. We have sold out this factory, Phase I and Phase II and we are working hard to get the next one going because we are getting lots of inquiries.
Christopher Blansett (JP Morgan): You say you have 30 Quads installed now. In general could you give an update on the performance of all 30 of those systems, how things are going?
Richard M. Feldt: It is going well. We have already grown 350,000 wafers. To the extent that investors had concerns the Quad would work, it is going well. We are pleased. Now we have got to put those wafers through all of the cell and panel processing steps. We have taken some of those and brought them to Marlboro as a quick check and we have been pleased with the results. We will feel even better after we build panels in Devens but we are happy. This is going about as well as you could expect and to those of you that were worried that Quads would work, it does work.
Stephen O’Rourke (Deutsche Bank): On the Quad ribbon pullers, do you see any technical benefits that is seeing conversion efficiency compared to the Gemini furnaces that are running and producing wafers?
Richard M. Feldt: We have said that one of the reasons we are going to get conversion efficiency from 14.5 to 15.5 is in part due to Quad.
Sanjay Shrestha – Lazard Capital Markets
After you de-ramp more what is going to be the expected output from Marlboro going forward and what is the expected output for EverQ after the EverQ 3 ramp up starts in third quarter of 2008? |